Prey director Dan Tratchenberg has explained how his Predator is different from the other versions of it in the franchise.
Set in 1719, Prey sees Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche warrior battling the Predator (Dane DiLiegro). In an exclusive chat with Digital Spy, the filmmaker addressed how his alien feels compared to those in the original movies.
"For this one, I really wanted to make this version of the Predator so much more feral and ferocious and animalistic, from its movements to its silhouette and its design," Tratchenberg said.
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"That was something that we looked at the other iterations and tried to zig where they zagged a little bit," he added.
As a fan of the films, the director revealed it was hard for him to suspend his disbelief at times. In Prey, he tried to work his way around a more organic approach to bring the Predator on screen.
"The thing that I really wanted to do was, on the one hand, embrace the suit because I love the design of the creature and that it is a practical suit, but also, really try to make sure we weren't limited by the limitations of a physically-built suit with a man inside operating it," Tratchenberg said.
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"I sometimes feel in watching some of the Predator films that it feels very much like a professional wrestler, not literally, but a professional wrestler who's lumbering around," he continued. "I feel like it's driven by a person and I never have really gotten swept away by feeling like it's an alien creature."
The film's star, Amber Midthunder, weighed in on seeing DiLiegro's Predator coming to life on set as cameras were ready to roll.
"The way he sits, it's the suit and he has it open and he takes the head off, so it really does look like a guy in a suit, it's very silly to look at," Midthunder said.
"Then all of a sudden, we're ready to go and he suits up and it takes so many to put the head on, and there's an animatronic head that three or four people run, the mouth is moving and that's the moment when it really gets real."
Prey is released on Disney+ in the UK and on Hulu in the US on Friday, August 5.
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Stefania is a freelance writer specialising in TV and movies. After graduating from City University, London, she covered LGBTQ+ news and pursued a career in entertainment journalism, with her work appearing in outlets including Little White Lies, The Skinny, Radio Times and Digital Spy.
Her beats are horror films and period dramas, especially if fronted by queer women. She can argue why Scream is the best slasher in four languages (and a half).
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
